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Senate Years of Service: 1789-1795; 1795-1796; 1813-1823; 1823-1825 Party: Pro-Administration; Federalist; Federalist; Adams-Clay Federalist
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KING, Rufus, (half brother of Cyrus King and father of John Alsop King and James Gore King),
a Delegate from Massachusetts and a Senator from New York; born in Scarboro,
Maine (then a district of Massachusetts), March 24, 1755; attended Dummer Academy, Byfield,
Mass., and graduated from Harvard College in 1777; served in the Revolutionary War; studied law;
admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Newburyport in 1780; delegate to the Massachusetts
General Court 1783-1785; Member of the Continental Congress from Massachusetts 1784-1787;
delegate to the Federal constitutional convention at Philadelphia in 1787 and to the State convention in
1788 which ratified the same; moved to New York City in 1788; member, New York assembly;
elected to the United States Senate in 1789; reelected in 1795 and served from July 16, 1789, until
May 1796, when he resigned to become United States Minister to Great Britain; Minister to Great
Britain 1796-1803; unsuccessful Federalist candidate for Vice President of the United States in 1804;
again elected as a Federalist to the United States Senate in 1813; reelected in 1819 and served from
March 4, 1813, to March 3, 1825; chairman, Committee on Roads and Canals (Sixteenth Congress),
Committee on Foreign Relations (Seventeenth Congress); unsuccessful candidate for Governor of
New York in 1816 and for President of the United States in 1816; again United States Minister to
Great Britain 1825-1826; died in Jamaica, Long Island, N.Y., April 29, 1827; interment in the
churchyard of Grace Church.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Ernst, Robert. Rufus King: American
Federalist. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968; King, Charles, ed. The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King. 6 vols. 1894-1900. Reprint. New York: Da
Capo Press, 1971.
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